Holland Prize Winners

The 2017 Leicester B. Holland Prize jury was held on August 7, 2017, at the historic Octagon House, operated as a museum by the American Institute of Architects Foundation, in Washington, DC. The Holland Prize, an annual competition open to both students and professionals, recognizes the best single-sheet measured drawing of an historic site, structure, or landscape prepared by an individual(s) to the standards and guidelines of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), or Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). The prize honors Leicester B. Holland (1882-1952), FAIA, who in the 1930s was chairman of the AIA’s Committee on Historic Buildings, head of the Fine Arts Division of the Library of Congress (LOC), first curator of the HABS collection at the LOC, co-founder of the HABS program, and the first chair of the HABS Advisory Board. The prize is administered by the National Park Service's Heritage Documentation Programs (HABS/HAER/HALS) and the LOC's Center for Architecture, Design and Engineering, and is supported by the Paul Rudolph Trust and the American Institute of Architects.

The prize is intended to increase awareness, knowledge, and appreciation of historic resources throughout the United States while adding to the permanent HABS, HAER, and HALS collection at the LOC, and to encourage the submission of drawings among professionals and students. By requiring only a single sheet, the competition challenges the delineator to capture the essence of the site through the presentation of key features that reflect its significance.

2017

Winner:Publication of the Winning Drawing in Preservation Architect (the online newsletter of the American Institute of Architects' Historic Resources Committee), $1000 Cash Prize, and a Certificate of Recognition

Submission Information: This is the third year that Mr. Dubé has entered the Holland Prize competition. In 2014, his drawing of the Streetcar Depot at the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, Pacific Branch (HABS CA-336-A) in Los Angeles, California, was awarded an Honorable Mention.

Historic Significance: Completed in 1884, this was the home of Wallace L. Hardison and his family. Mr. Hardison is remembered primarily for being a co-founder of both the Union Oil and the Limoneira Companies. The stable was completed in 1885. The first floor housed horses, carriages, wagons, tack, and other equipment. The second floor a large open hay loft with grain feed bins. The exterior siding is a mix of rustic shiplap siding, vertical trim, and corner boards. On December 5, 1977, Hardison House was designated Ventura County Landmark No. 35. The Hardison farm was purchased by real estate developer in 2013. Concerned community members reached a preservation agreement with the developer in 2017 to reduce the number of homes to be built on the site and to restore the exterior of the historic Hardison Home. Additionally, the stable, a 1910 residence, and a 1920 garage, would also be preserved in place within a heritage park easement in the new development.

Submission Information: This year, two teams of students submitted entries to the Holland Prize competition from the Escuela de Arquitectura at the Universidad Politécnica de Puerto Rico. In 2016, a student team from the same architecture program was awarded the Holland Prize for their documentation of the Lazareto Isla de Cabras (HABS PR-140) in Toa Baja, Puerto Rico.

Historic Significance: The José Celso Barbosa House Museum is a nineteenth-century building located on Barbosa Street #16 in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. The construction shows a symmetry in its façade which has three doors with lattices in wood and a balcony with a series of balustrades of the same material. Both inside and outside, the building contains transoms with fretwork for ventilation that, next to the "medio punto" located in the interior, is considered and identified as an example of the Puerto Rican architecture of the time. The structure is a museum since 1960 as a remainder of Dr. Barbosa's birthplace and where he cared for his patients. Later in 1984 it was listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places under the name Casa Natal Dr. José Celso Barbosa. Furniture, photos, documents, and other articles are there to preserve part of what he was in life a doctor, politician, and equality defender of Puerto Ricans.

2016

Winner:Publication of the Winning Drawing in Preservation Architect (the online newsletter of the American Institute of Architects' Historic Resources Committee), $1000 Cash Prize, and a Certificate of Recognition

Submission Information: This is the first year that a team of students have entered the Holland Prize Competition from the Universidad Politécnica de Puerto Rico.

Historic Significance: The lazaretto's original purpose was to house yellow fever and cholera patients, but few remember such noble commitment today. Instead, for over a century today—and in spite for being a ruin—the lazaretto has been an emblematic landscape component in San Juan's Bay with a distinctive profile that has been appreciated by many generations of residents and visitors to the old city. It represents the only example of its kind ever built in Puerto Rico, simultaneously underlining how Spanish Colonial building codes required health related facilities to be built outside the walled enclave. Its construction methods highlight building practices imposed on the Island (and Cuba) by Madrid's School of Engineers, Roads and Port Facilities. The project's dossier (narrative) became the precedent for detailing succeeding comparative building initiatives in terms of scope, tectonics, and contents.

Submission Information: This is the third Honorable Mention awarded to Cate Bainton for her entries to the Holland Prize Competition.

Historic Significance: Franciscan missionaries founded twenty-one missions on the Pacific coast of the Spanish colony of Alta California between 1769 and 1823. Control of Alta California shifted to Mexico in the 1820s and to the United States in the 1840s. Some of the communities that grew around the missions became major cities; some missions were abandoned and later reconstructed. Portions of El Camino Real, the road connecting the missions, became interstate or state highways. Mission San Juan Bautista was the fifteenth mission to be established, in 1797. Despite repeated damage from earthquakes on the adjacent San Andreas Fault, Mission San Juan Bautista was never moved from its original location and has been in continuous use as a church since its establishment. Its environs are still largely agricultural, its plaza has been restored to the spirit of its 1870 state, and its adjacent portion of El Camino Real is still unpaved. Noted architect Irving Morrow, landscape architect Emerson Knight, and mission restoration specialist Harry Downie played a part in the restoration of the buildings and landscape. Current and former mission sites are of archeological interest.

Submission Information: This is the first time a student team from the School of Art Institute has placed in the Holland Prize Competition.

Historic Significance: The Chess Pavilion is an open-air structure that was built in 1957 out of concrete and Indiana limestone. The site where the pavilion is located has been a popular gathering place for chess players since the 1930s. The Chess Pavilion received a Citation of Merit from the Chicago Chapter of the American Institute of Architects at its Civic Pride Luncheon in 1957.

Significance: Saint James' House was built around 1768-1769. Early records associate the construction of the building with James Mercer, a local lawyer, who purchased the property from Fielding Lewis and George Washington. Although some modifications have altered its interior appearance, the original dwelling house retains much of its integrity, making it unique among Fredericksburg dwellings.

Significance: Though in partial ruins, this chapel and graveyard serve as a reminder of early eighteenth-century Anglican beginnings and particularly the proliferation of chapels of ease throughout the Lowcountry to address the religious needs of remote plantation inhabitants.

2014

Winner: Publication of the Winning Drawing in Preservation Architect (the online newsletter of the American Institute of Architects' Historic Resources Committee), $1000 Cash Prize, and a Certificate of Recognition

Significance: In 1935, the Civilian Conservation Corps designed and constructed a series of park structures at the western confluence of the Trinity River as it enters Lake Worth. Sited within the native landscape on an east facing bluff, this pavilion has a commanding view of the lake, park lands, and the city of Fort Worth beyond.

Significance: Bentley Hall is the first building constructed on the Allegheny College campus, and was designed to hold one of the country's most impressive library collections, located in a region that at the time was at the edge of the western frontier.